The Young Perish, and the Old Linger
by PI-Valkyrie-exLorien
Summary: "It seemed to Thorin that everyone he loved would perish in dragon fire. But the cruelty of Time is nothing when compared to the cruelty of Hope." Thorin loses his only love in dragon fire and the ruins of a once-great kingdom. One-shot.


**This is a just a one-shot about Thorin's back story and the love that he lost when Smaug attacked Erebor. The idea that 'you don't know what you have until it's gone' is pretty prominent here. My apologies if Gollum shows up once the fic is over. He likes to invade my a/n 's. **

**Disclaimer: I am not Tolkien. Have you seen his eyebrows? My eyebrows do not look like hair caterpillars. Plus, much as I hate to admit it, I also have no rights to the original story. So I'm not P.J. either. Glad we got all that cleared up.**

He met her in the fog of dawn, perhaps a hundred years before. He refused to keep count, for it only deepened the grief of her fall into fire. They were young and in love, so young that their beards had not even yet come in. But lack of facial hair had never stopped his nephew, so why should it have stopped him?

She had returned from what she called a hunt, but had no prey to show for her efforts. He could not blame here there; it had been the first true week of winter, and animals had taken to their dens. Only with fair luck could you find game near the walls of Erebor, and Mahal knows how the line of Durin had played with luck so that it would not come near them in later days.

He had been a spoilt prince playing hero when he met her, boasting his victories against the orcs that sometimes crawled at their borders. He'd thought he was a warrior. He would learn much later the sufferings of a true warrior and the sacrifices of heroism, but he wished now he could go back to his ignorant adolescence. After all, it was his adolescence she fell in love with.

She had laughed at his glorified tales of the orc-hunt. He had responded with a biting retort. No love in their eyes; only challenge. And that was how it went on, moon after moon, until the day he realized that he loved her with every fiber in his being. That was the day she died.

She had never struck him as one to die in dragon fire, but the firestorm did not pick and choose its victims. This he knew quite well. It killed any who got in its way.

The few survivors were struggling to breathe in the smoke as they fled from their broken home. The Elves had turned their back, and Thorin could feel the fury prickling down his skin. He had counted the survivors one by one and led them away from the flames. Only after they left did it occur to him that she was not among them.

He could hope, as he had done for his father, that she was still alive. That she had fled the city and vanished into the wild. She, of anyone, could survive in the wild lands. But deep down he knew, as he had with his father, the she was dead.

"My love for you is stronger than dragon fire," he had whispered to the darkness on a starless night. "It will burn unceasing beyond the end of my days and into my death, where I will see you again. I promise."

It seemed to Thorin that fire would always rain down upon those he loved, no matter how hard he tried to prevent it. That her deaths was ultimately inevitable; just another gravestone to dig in the ash. She mattered only as much as the others who died in the West Guard room, clinging to their final heaving breaths of ash and smoke as if pain was the only thing left to hold on to. She had never been one for hopeless surrender, to die clawing for air and enough time to say goodbye to those around her. Who she would not even have recognized in her last moments.

He had laid the blame for her death on his own shoulders. If he had been there to protect them, he could have gotten her out in time. But he understood, in the corners of his mind that knew better than to listen to his raging heart, that he only would have died with her. Yet so many years later, staring out at the rubble that is Laketown, he could not shake the feeling of blame from his shoulders.

The lake was a pool of fire and ice, blood and ash, steaming from cold and burning at the surface. He wanted nothing more than to dive in and rid himself of such conflict, to drown in all his angst-stricken self pity. But he went on, just as he did when he searched for her body among those who escaped. Because the cruelly slow wear of time on Thorin's frame and his final shreds of sanity are nothing when compared to the cruelty of hope. He could almost feel that same wisp of hope in his heart that perhaps she might be alive. For here, when burnt beyond recognition and laid to rest in hot embers, all the bodies looked the same as the ones that fell the first time. These were the same ashes and the same cries of grief echoing in the air like vultures screaming from the skies above.

He would die now to save her life sixty years ago. But his body was to stubborn to give up on him, even if he wanted nothing more. Their love was stronger than dragon fire, but his heart was as fragile as glass in his few, sick moments among the rubble of Laketown. Glass that had shattered and melted into his insides.

The young perish, and the old linger.

Deserved that these final bitter days should be his.

**Smeagol: Stops it, we're sobbingses, precious. We're cryingses. We hasn't cried in yearses. **

**Me: Oh, shut up and go away. And no NCIS references here.**

**Smeagol: Readses and reviewses!**


End file.
